Homeland Elegies
2020 • 384 pages
Ratings11
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings11
Average rating4.5
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and author of American Dervish, an American son and his immigrant father search for belonging -- in post-Trump America, and with each other. Homeland Elegies is an astonishing and deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams. Drawn from Akhtar's life as the son of Muslim immigrants, it blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a nation in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Davos to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan. All the while, he spares no one -- neither himself, nor his loved ones, nor his fellow Americans -- any indignity in order to make better sense of it all.
Reviews with the most likes.
Homeland Elegies is a post-9/11, post-Trump Muslim-American manifesto. I could never claim to know the experience of being Muslim in our country, but I think this book does a fantastic job of fleshing out nuanced, complicated feelings regarding a nuanced, complicated identity. The choice to make this read like a memoir only adds to the effect. In fact, I thought this was a memoir until about halfway through (love that shit) – the author does a good job of making it very convincing, and feeling like you're reading a first-hand account makes it easy to empathize, or at least sympathize, with the experience. There are some interesting dissertations/opinions on the topic of the American sociopolitical climate that lead to Trump's rise, and many scenarios of overt racism (borderline hate crimes) towards Muslim Americans/people of southeast asian or middle eastern descent that are automatically assumed Muslim that feels way too real. The ending really smacks you in the chest. Definitely worth a read, if you're into this kind of thing.
I'm always a little leery of autofiction, and this was the sort that I tend to find irritating (where the memoir-esque elements are very strong). And while I understand the vignette-type structure, I rarely enjoy reading it and that held true here as well.
A novel that reads like a memoir, and who knows what's fact and what's fiction? In any case, it's fascinating, beautifully written, and incredibly insightful.
